Lately, Taylor and Gray and their colleagues have been trying to worm out whether the birds understand the relationship between cause and effect, especially the effect of forces they can’t see. This is called causal reasoning, and it’s one of our most powerful mental abilities. Causal reasoning is at the root of our understanding that objects in the world behave in predictable ways and that mechanisms or forces we can’t see may be responsible for events. “We’re constantly making inferences about things we can’t see,” says Gray. If we’re standing inside and a Frisbee flies through our window,
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